DESCARTES. (1:4'kiirt'. Lat. 1ZEN.v•t s catEstt s 11:)..itl•1115n). tine of the most dis tinguished modern philos?11111 somet f•alli fl father of modt rn Ile ryas born at 1.a Ilaye, in Touraine, and was sent at tl age of eight pars to the Jesuit college at 1..1 where he soon beeanie for his keenness of intellect. and made great and Lipid progress in languages. inathematies. and astronomy. It was not long. IloW•Ner. before be beeame dissatisfied with the doctrines and ethod of seholasticism, and felt it impossible to aegilles•e in what 1 ail hitherto been regarded as knowledge. Tbe Crst thing that he did after leaving college was to allatubat books and 4.11• deallor to efface from his mind all that he had hitherto been taught, that it !night be frei• to receive the impressions of truth, wh•neesoever of his plan he resohed to !rase'. and soon entered the army as a volunteer, .arcing •iiceessively under \lanriee of Nassau, son of \Villiani of Drange, under Tilly and lloweNer. the life soldier contributed little to his main object, and he quitted the army in 1621. After making Journeys in different directions. he at last re in 10-29 to Holland. where lie prepared 1114..4 of 111- Work:. attracted 111.1113 disciples. anti at the same time became lin ol ed in -1•N era I lea riled with the theologians. .\Itliongli he loved independence. het in liittf he accepted an invitation addressed to him by Queen Christina to go to Swedn. williugnes. tc leave Holland was partly oceasi?ned by Ilis anxiety to escape from the ltostilit? his inies. lie died only a few months after his ar rival at the Court 01 1,11i?en t hrist it a. SiNteen years later his body was brou•lit 1.1 Paris and loiried in the Church of Saint t;eneviisve-du INIont.
The grand object toward which Descartes di rected his endeavors the attainment of a tirm philosophical conviction. The was Whereby lie sought to attain this end is explained in the diseourse 011 1111•11011 1 In (11( published in 1637. This small hut extremely in teresting and important treatise contain, a his. tory of the inner life of the author. tracing the progress of his mental ti •lopment from its emumencement in early years to the point whore it resulted in his resolution to hold nothing for true until lit' had ascertained the grounds of certitude. The author in the same treatise also (-NIA:lint; the practical rules whereby lie resolved to be guided while in this state I if be lief, and by the observance of which he hoped to arrive at absolute certainty. if indeed it were at
all attainable. The result of his inquiries, so conducted, he exhibited more particularly in his 1//ditationos ih i'riatft I'//i/osophOt and the pig l'bilosoph jut' 1644). Ile begins philosophy avow with a resolve to doubt every• thiuig for might not our beliefs be the result of the mist-hit-NM), working of some evil nlle fact he found indubitable—his doubting and his thinking. But in order to think he must exist ; hence, in the fundamental fact of experience he behoved that he came into know ing contact with Ultimate reality—a process of reasoning which .thgustine had followed before him. In other words, he could not doubt that lie felt and thought, and therefore he could ii. t doubt that he. the feeler, the thinker, •xisted. This relation between consciousness and existume ho expressed by the 111eilloralde words. I'oqih,, t Iwo sum ("1 think. therefore I Upon examining the criterion for the fortitude of this knowledge. he found it in the clearness and dis tinctness of his thought about bin self. Ilenee lie argued that what' ver is as clearly and dis tinctly thought as self-consciousness must be true. Among these clear and distinct thoughts he first reeogni/ed the idea of I ;oil as the abso lutely perfect being. This idea, he reasoned, could not be formed in our minds by ourselves, for the impt rfect can n•‘•r originate the per fect: it must be innate—i.e. part of the original structure of one understanding. and implanted there by the perfect being himself. hence, from the existence of the idea of perfection. Descartes inferred the existence of (OHI as the originator if it ; he inferred it also from the inere nature of the idea, bee:nisi- the idea of perfection involve4 exist•ncf—it form of the so-called 'ontological arminientf Hut if Cod exist. then we have a guarantee of the previously determined ground of certitude, for (Aod the perfect being cannot deceive, and therefore whatever our conscious ness clearly testifies may be implicitly believed. This Cartesian position that the truth of a proposition is tested by its clear and distinct. intelligibility is the principle of rationalism (q.v.).